“Happiness is an ideal not of reason but of imagination.” -Immanuel Kant
Before we begin, I want you to consider how you are feeling today. Rate how you feel on a scale of 1-10… 1 being the lowest level of happiness and 10 being the highest.
We are taught from birth that we must work hard and become successful to attain a life of happiness. But is it true?
According to new studies performed at Harvard University, we’ve had it backwards all along.
It is commonly believed that we must do, be or have certain things to make us feel happy. We place our feelings of happiness outside of ourselves and assign those feelings to material objects, people, places and events.
This way of thinking about happiness causes us a great deal of stress, because we believe certain things must take place before we can feel happy. In the meantime, we’re in the trenches and have to “work hard” and “sweat it out” until we finally achieve that thing we think will make us happy. That is, of course, until we do achieve that thing.
Quickly after, the happiness fades and we find ourselves searching for yet another “thing” to regain that feeling of happiness within.
We then become disillusioned and confused, wondering why that thing we thought we wanted so bad and worked so hard for, for so long, no longer gives us that precious feeling of happiness.
This inevitably leads to depression.
Did you know that depression strikes about 17 million American adults each year–more than cancer, AIDS, or coronary heart disease?
Our social conditioning has led us to believe that outer circumstances and situations dictate if we can feel happy or depressed, and we cannot change them.
Therefore, we must be victims of our own fate. However, the latest findings as explained by Harvard University teacher and researcher Shawn Achor, mirror thoughts of the late Franklin D. Roosevelt, when he stated, “Men and women are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.”
The following research has concluded that our mindset of happiness or suffering are conscious choices. And we can learn to make those choices more easily through training in positive psychology, which is fundamentally defined as the study of human potential.
Did you know there is actually a 21:1 negative to positive ratio in the way we study psychology?
Positive psychology does not look at the average, or below average results, conditions or problems… but instead focuses on above average results to better understand what is working well, and how we can recreate it.
What these studies have revealed is that our entire society has been built on a backwards concept of happiness.
We thought if you work hard and be successful you will be happy, but scientific experiments have discovered that if you are happy FIRST, before taking on a task, you increase your success by up to 50%!
This is beyond significant. It’s revolutionary.
In one such experiment, they took two separate groups of four year olds and had them put together blocks as fast as possible. The first group was told to think of the happiest thoughts they’ve had before putting the blocks together, and the second group was simply set in front of the blocks and instructed to perform the task.
Surprisingly, the group of children who were told to think of happy thoughts before performing the task, outperformed the second group by an incredible 50%.
That’s fine for kids, but what about full grown adults?
To uncover the answer to this question, they gathered three groups of highly educated doctors…
The task was to make accurate medical diagnoses as quickly as possible. Who would win?
Group A was primed with happiness before the task.
Group B was primed with reading a scientific medical journal before the task.
Group C was completely neutral, and was simply instructed to perform the task.
Guess what they found…
The group that was primed with happiness outperformed both the neutral and the group who read the journals beforehand by a 50% faster rate of correct diagnoses–with three times greater increase in intellectual flexibility! Were these doctors in group A told to think of happy thoughts first? No. They were simply given… candy.
This monumental breakthrough in mind science found that we are up to 50% more likely to experience success and perform more intelligently when we are primed with happiness before undertaking any task.
Have you ever been under a deadline? Sure, we all have.
Whether at school, work or an at-home job, deadlines can be a great cause of stress and most people work their way through the stress as if using a “gun to the head” approach.
I’m not saying this isn’t an effective tactic… but these studies in the science of happiness have found that we can be incredibly more effective, more intelligent and get more done faster by simply doing something first that generates a feeling of happiness within us, before we begin the task to meet the deadline.
There are also untold benefits of being happy first. One of which is a stronger immune system and even a longer lifespan, as this study shows…
The Nun Study of 1932
In this experiment a group of nuns were collected for study. They were instructed over a 3-week period to write once per day in a journal and based solely on what they wrote in the journal, they were split up into three separate categories, from happiest to least happy. Over a long period of time, they found that 90% of those who were placed in the “happiest” group were still alive by age 85, while a shocking 70% of those categorized in the “unhappiest” group had passed away by the same age.
In other experiments it was discovered that in the business world happiness affects the workplace and productivity to an amazing degree. Employees who were primed with happiness before performing their tasks were found to have better job security, were better at keeping jobs, had superior productivity, were more resilient, experienced less burnout, had less turnover and even had greater sales!
With all this new information one might be left wondering, “well, all that sounds fabulous-in theory-but I don’t really know what I can do to feel happier right now…” It is for this reason that scientists discovered very specific ways to increase the level of happiness in your day, and in your life.
One technique you can easily perform in approximately 30 seconds is to write five things you are grateful for every morning. They found this changes your level of happiness over the next 24 hours, and doing it for 21 days straight alters your level of happiness over the next six months!
Another technique they discovered is to take 3 minutes per day to journal about a positive experience. Any positive experience, at any time in your life. Once per day, for 30 days straight and they saw a 50% drop in doctor visits, individuals reported to feel more social and their immune system was even improved.
They also found that people who perform one task at a time versus “multi-tasking” are able to get more done faster, with better efficiency and were actually happier at what they were doing.
Individuals reported that those who use their strengths in everyday life had the highest levels of energy, productivity and success in whatever area they wanted to achieve. They also found their weaknesses were strengthened as a byproduct of focusing and utilizing their strengths.
Exercise has been found to be equally as powerful and effective an anti-depressant, as actual anti-depressants.
Even a technique as simple as watching your breath go in and out actually changes the way your brain structures itself, changing electrical impulses in your brain which increases gamma waves and as a result increases your level of insight and the frequency of those “ah hah” moments of inspiration and elation.
These are all easy techniques that can be performed in just seconds to minutes per day, that can drastically improve everything you do including your level of success, productivity, health and even finances.
People think we should feel guilty about feeling happy when there are so many sad things going on in the world. The Science of Happiness shows that our brains are hard-wired to feel empathy towards other people, whether we label the feeling as “good” or “bad.” Our smiles spread just as quickly as our frowns do. Therefore, one of my favorite quotes comes from the end of the following video series by Shawn Achor…
“In good times happiness is a luxury–in bad times it is a necessity.” -Shawn Achor
The Science of Happiness and Potential – Part One
(http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=r8DngXKtvEQ)
Part Two
(http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=3I6YJtq2Oqk)
Part Three
(http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=vQt_WNewOKs)
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